Guide to Animal Behaviour

by Douglas Glover

  Senior Room

  There were nine boys in the senior room, yet because of my size and ineptitude they let Brenda Blandford play third base on the school softball team instead of me. The other boys teased me until I lost my temper and punched Myron Solecki in the nose as hard as I could. This had no effect whatsoever, and I began to stay inside during recess. I played chess with a fat boy named Robert. Anytime during school hours, I could beat Robert handily. But after four o’clock, I would invariably lose. Since then, I have read chess literature extensively without finding a single report of a similar phenomenon. My grades were generally As and Bs, except for Writing, which was always a C. In his written comments, Mr. Kennedy would indicate that I had an attitude problem, which he characterized as, “Daydreams too much. Inattentive. Work sometimes sloppy as a result.” I recall that I was beginning to find the presence of girls with breasts disturbing, yet attractive. And I daydreamed constantly about the landing of a vast army of Martian soldiers who recognized me at once as their leader. With my faithful green troops, I conquered the known world and issued undisputed orders such as, “No woman shall wear clothes in the presence of the king.”

  High School

  I fainted. That wooden thump during the introduction of the new teachers was my head hitting the gym floor. Only six hundred and eighty-two strangers noticed. I was carried to the principal’s office, where the school secretary put wet paper towels on the back of my neck while I sat with my head between my knees. Life was over. At twelve, I had nothing to look forward to but the grave.

  There were several large-breasted girls in my new class, but none of them seemed interested in me because of my size and youth. I tried out for the football team my second week. Someone hit me in the stomach with a ball, knocking the wind out of me. Huge boys, as big as horses, ran over my body as I lay gasping in the dirt. Petey said I was lucky to be in high school. He said some of the girls in my class went all the way. One I liked especially, because she seemed so quiet and sweet, Petey had seen in a parked car with a boy from the football team. The boy had had his hand inside her blouse. Hearing this, I felt betrayed.

  I played with my wee-wee so much I gave myself a blister. I thought it was finally going to drop off. Mother came to my room and asked me if I were unhappy. I said no, but she seemed suddenly thoughtful. I screamed, “Don’t let them put me ahead another grade!” Instead, she took me to see a psychiatrist. The whole day I took tests. I had to answer questions like “What are your spare-time activities?” and “If Bill is Bob’s brother and Jean is Bob’s mother and Emily is Bill’s aunt and Jean and Emily are not sisters, how is Bill related to Jean?” I sweated pools worrying over what they would do if I failed. When it was all over, the psychiatrist told Mother I had a “near genius” I. Q. His preference survey showed that I would make an excellent “concert penis.” I was mortified hearing that word spoken in front of my mother and tried desperately to make her hurry away. Unaccountably, the news seemed to cheer her up. She bought me a milkshake on the way home and said I was a good little boy who would make her proud. I began to take piano lessons after school, though it was obvious from the start I had no talent.

  Winter came and I asked the sweet, quiet girl to go to the Christmas dance with me. To be on the safe side, in case of cancellations, I asked a half-dozen other girls as well. Apparently this was a faux pas. My mother finally arranged a date for me with a little girl named Wanda Welbourne who was still in elementary school but only a year older than me. It wasn’t until Father had picked her up and driven us to the high school that I realized Mother had made a terrible mistake. Wanda refused to dance with me, not because she was shy, but on religious grounds. Her minister, she said, believed that God kept a watchful eye on high school dance floors. We sat in the bleachers the whole evening drinking Cokes. Every twenty minutes or so, Wanda would go to the bathroom with a group of other girls. They all wore crinolines that snapped as they walked, and the smell of their perfume made me dizzy. Later, when I walked Wanda to her door, I tried to kiss her cheek. Suddenly, she grabbed me. Her mouth opened like a great hole, and she stuck out her stomach so that I nearly lost my balance. I put my hand on her breast. “No, no!” she said, wrenching herself away and shutting the door between us. I reeled down the walk to my father’s car, sure that he had seen everything.

  Piano Lessons

  The next year I was an inch taller and tried to impress people by giving myself the nickname “Moose” which did not catch on. Wanda Welbourne told everyone I was her boyfriend, although I had not seen her since Christmas. Petey had somehow made it to high school. He told me he’d heard Wanda had legs like peanut butter. “What do you mean?” I asked. “They spread easy.” I still did not understand jokes. I made the football team because, as it happened, Wanda’s father was the assistant coach. I was knocked out the first week. The second week I fainted when someone stepped on my hand with his cleated boots.

  Fridays, after school, I walked across town to take my piano lesson. My teacher was Mrs. Crotty. She kept a photograph of her dead husband on top of the piano next to the sheet music and made me play with oranges balanced on top of my hands. (If you try this, you will see that it is impossible.) The best thing about piano lessons was Sylvia Tandino who lived in house at the end of Mrs. Crotty’s street. Every Friday, Sylvia and I would spend the one-hour interval between school and my piano lesson upstairs in her bedroom studying, with a complete set of the Encyclopedia Britannica propped against the door. Sylvia’s mother, a young Italian widow who worked afternoons at the pickle factory, never bothered us. We would lie on the bed, wrapped in each other’s arms, while Sylvia taught me to French kiss. It was Sylvia who said, “When I was a little girl, I thought babies come out where you shit. Imagine that!” Thus putting paid to another misconception I had entertained following Petey’s barnyard demonstrations.

  One Friday, Wanda Welbourne invited me to her house to play Monopoly prior to my piano lesson. We had Cokes and iced cupcakes in the Welbournes’ rec room. Wanda pulled me down on top of her on the fire resistant carpet, nearly crushing me with her arms. When she kissed me, our teeth knocked together so hard I was afraid we had chipped them. She rubbed her stomach against me until I was quite delirious and pushed my hand up under her skirt from behind. “I love this,” she whispered, adding after a moment, “I mean, I love you.” I was trying to slip my fingers inside the band of her underpants, when she suddenly threw me off, twisting my arm and impaling my back on a Monopoly piece.

  Adultery

  There was nothing left but work and study! Sylvia and Wanda had a fight over me in the girls’ change room during PT. Wanda won. I was her boyfriend again. But she wouldn’t have anything to do with me, claiming that I had committed adultery. Adultery! Sylvia cried when she returned my Dylan albums. I felt guilt twist in my stomach when I saw her tears. At the same time, I couldn’t help but be amazed at Wanda’s perfidiousness. The woman would stop at nothing to get what she wanted. She had turned everyone against me — only Petey continued to be my friend.

  For several weeks I swore off girls and devoted myself to physical culture, doing sit-ups and push-ups every night before going to bed. I vowed to stop playing with my wee-wee. Petey discovered a stack of black and white photos of naked people in his parents’ dresser drawer. One showed a pretty woman with a man’s wee-wee in her mouth. Another showed the same woman with her legs stretched apart, her crotch hidden in a thatch of tightly coiled hair. Petey read me passages from a book called Peyton Place. I was shocked to find it had been written by a woman named Grace. The pictures and words confused me so much that I broke my vow. All I could think about was the woman in the photograph. In desperation, I asked Wanda to the Christmas dance, our second date. She said no, that we must go separately as part of my punishment, but that we might sit together on the bleachers and talk.

  I sat on the bleachers for two hours, sipping Coke. Wanda arrived with her older brother
and his girlfriend and immediately disappeared into the bathroom. Later I saw her kissing someone under the mistletoe. Petey had come to the dance alone with a branch of mistletoe and was wandering around bothering girls. He even tried to kiss Miss Demian, the algebra teacher. Wanda walked in front of the bleachers with three other girls, laughing. I heard her whisper the word “bigamist” as they passed. Petey chased Wanda and her friends shrieking into the bathroom, then came and offered me a drink of his Coke. When I shook my head, he said, “This isn’t Coke, you dummy. This is a mickey. I got a whole six-pack outside, too.” I took a sip and coughed until I thought my throat was bleeding. Petey followed Miss Demian without her noticing, holding his hands up under her bottom, pretending to catch her turds. He caught Wanda under the mistletoe and kissed her for ten minutes or so. I drank the rest of his Coke and went outside to be sick, having experienced the true emptiness and solitude of the life of passion. I decided that I was probably turning into an alcoholic.

  Love

  Sylvia let me touch her breasts. This after prolonged negotiation, some of which we conducted over the telephone. My mother must have overheard, for under my pillow one night, I discovered a paperback volume entitled Family Life for Teens. Family Life came replete with tasteful photographs and line diagrams accompanied by inane captions like “Puppy Love” (the picture of a boy and girl squeezed together on a playground swing) and “Female Reproductive Organs” (a vague sketch that reminded me of two garden beans sprouting side by side in a glass of water). From Family Life, I learned that Sylvia and I were engaged in petting, which until then was something I thought you did to a dog. After petting came heavy petting, which apparently was dangerous as it could lead to the girl having a baby. How this happened I could not quite make out from the text and diagrams. Now, when my father drove me into town for a school dance or a party, he would look at me sternly before I got out of the car and say, “I hope you won’t do anything that will make us ashamed of you.” At such times, I felt under tremendous pressure as I did not know what he meant, though I hoped I would measure up.

  Sylvia and I began to flaunt our sexuality. In class we would scribble passionate love notes punctuated with jealous directives against so much as looking at members of the opposite sex. We would exchange adoring glances, sometimes sticking out the tips of our tongues to indicate that we wanted to French kiss. Miss Demian caught us one day. When the period was over, she took me aside and advised me in the sternest terms that seeing too much of one person could lead to trouble. What sort of trouble? Mrs. Crotty began to remark on my late arrivals, my often sweaty state when I did arrive after running all the way from Sylvia’s house, and my complete inattention. She had given up on the oranges and pressed me through the first three Conservatory grades without allowing me to endure the inevitable disillusionment of examination. My mother began to be cross with me for not practising and threatened to stop paying for my lessons. Music had turned out to be a grave disappointment to her. It was also mentioned that my psychiatric assessment had cost Father $150 — “all for nothing.”

  When I played with my wee-wee, I thought about every woman I knew, even Mrs. Crotty and Miss Demian. Family Life said that playing with my wee-wee (penis) was called masturbation, that many boys did it (had my mother read this?) and that it would stop after marriage. There were several popular misconceptions regarding masturbation: for example, it could make you go mad or blind or grow hair on the palms of your hands. I had not heard this before and wondered if it might be true. There was hair growing on the backs of my hands! I proposed to Sylvia that we have intercourse to prevent me from going bonkers before I got out of Grade 10. She declined, but continued to allow me to touch her breasts. I attempted forays toward what Peyton Place called “the vee of her crotch.” We made so much noise that Mrs. Tandino’s new boyfriend, Ray, came upstairs one afternoon and tried to push the bedroom door open against the stack of encyclopedias.

  All this persecution served only to make our love grow stronger. We read Romeo and Juliet in English that year. I saw the movie — the bedroom scene made me light-headed, though I noted that Sylvia’s breasts were not as large as Juliet’s. I discovered that Sylvia often wore a combination girdle and garter belt. She let me touch between her legs as long as I kept my hands outside the girdle. We went to see a movie together, and she masturbated me through my pants in the back row. As far as I can tell, no one has ever written about the problem of wet pants in young love. Yet, along with the pleasure, I began to feel a nagging guilt for the secret life we were leading. I was turning into a split personality like Jekyll and Hyde.

  Fatherhood

  I suffered a nervous breakdown! All I could do was lie in bed and sleep. My mother said I had been doing too much, what with football, drama club, choir, United Nations club, math club, piano and ballroom dancing lessons — all of which she’d forced me to endure (except for the football). But that wasn’t the real reason. I was a father! At least Sylvia said I was. She wasn’t sure. This announcement came the afternoon Coach Welbourne let me run a play when both our first and second string quarterbacks were injured. I fumbled and then recovered for no yards, but at least I had been on the field. Between the game and my drama club rehearsal, Sylvia said her period was late. How late? A day. A day! I saw my career as a professional ballplayer vanish like a mirage. Suddenly, I had to make plans and be responsible. We would live with my parents until I was sixteen, then move away someplace where I could get a job as a checkout boy or a truck driver (if my father would teach me to drive) .

  Everything seemed shrouded in a dead, gray cloud — I knew how much my parents would be disappointed. Mother was already disturbed because I had abandoned Wanda for Sylvia Tandino. She told me I was becoming common. Though we might have crushes on a variety of people as we grew up, she said, it was better to marry a person from the same background. Sylvia was a nice girl, but she had never enjoyed the advantages I had. Also she was Catholic and we were Anglican. I said Sylvia made me happy. Mother said one had to be awfully careful to ensure long-term happiness. Her arguments seemed well-meant and kindly, but they made me feel uncomfortable.

  Sylvia went to a doctor for tests. For the week we had to wait for the results, I remained in bed. Mother said I had a work-avoidance neurosis. Father said I was lazy. I could not face the world. My future hung in the balance. I was only a child myself. How could a child have a child? This was God’s punishment for playing with my penis and not listening to my parents. The night before the test results were due, I confessed everything. I knew by then there was no hope for one so mired in sin as I was. Besides, my parents would need to make arrangements for Sylvia to move in. Probably my brothers would have to double up so she could have one of their rooms.

  Afterward

  I am fifteen now. Old. In a year, I will be able to get my driver’s licence. Sylvia was not pregnant. But she had to tell the doctor who she had had intercourse with. The doctor said, “He’s so young. I didn’t think he was man enough.” I chose to regard this as a compliment. Sylvia and I have agreed to have a chaste relationship from now on and begin to see other people. I feel the adult world closing in — those brief hours of freedom before Mrs. Crotty’s lesson are no more. My musical career also has ended.

  Many things have changed. Petey’s sister Diane got pregnant in Grade 9. Petey took it hard and now is in reform school for arson. Sylvia has found part-time work as an office assistant for the doctor who gave her the pregnancy test. The doctor has taken down his pants in front of her and invited her to go to Acapulco with him (he was only married a year ago!) during the Christmas holidays. Wanda has become a lesbian and cut her hair short. So far I don’t think she has found any other lesbians in our school — perhaps she is only doing this to draw attention to herself.

  The other day Mother and Father had a fight. Mother confided to me that Father had ruined the whole birth experience for her by saying he would be embarrassed if she screame
d. Apparently, Mother had been looking forward to screaming. One begins (I am beginning) to realize how wounded everyone is, how many wounds there are. In my dreams, the future bears down upon me like a runaway horse.

  THE TRAVESTY OF SLEEP

  Far into the travesty of sleep we are making tracks for higher ground.

  — T.C. Cannon, Caddo Indian artist killed in a car accident in the plaza at Santa Fe, 1979.

  The Worm

  I was in Santa Fe the spring the prisoners rioted.

  That was a terrible situation as you may recall. Prisoners broke into the pharmacy and took all the drugs, then tortured snitches and queers to death and burned buildings down around their ears. The State of New Mexico called in the National Guard. I remember uniformed soldiers racing through the streets to muster-points, olive-green Medivac helicopters ferrying the dead and injured to the hospital on St. Michael’s Drive, smoke rising from the mesa below the city and TV reporters wading through the ruined cell blocks in rubber boots, speaking smugly of horrible things.

  One incident the TV reporters liked especially to tell about was the discovery of a man who had been burned to death with acetylene torches, then had his head chopped off and stuck between his legs.

  For days there were rumours that prisoners remained unaccounted for, that they were either ashes under the collapsed gymnasium roof or had somehow escaped into the Sangre de Cristo Mountains where they lived in caves long since abandoned by the Indians.

  On Good Friday, I drove to Chimayo with a friend. We entered the Sanctuario to dig a handful of holy mud from the mysterious hole in the sacristy and saw the glass-encased statues of the Infant-Jesus and the Virgin of Prague, the primitive religious paintings hanging along the walls, and all the prayerful, hand-written messages left there by simple folk.